Joyce Banda, Malawi’s first female vice president, became Malawi’s first female president in 2012 after the sudden death of Bungu wa Mutharika in office. From day one, maternal health and girls’ education were a priority in her administration, she tells the Maternal Health Initiative’s Roger-Mark De Souza in an interview at the Wilson Center.

2017 promises to be a key year for U.S. government leadership on a variety of issues. Not least among them is global water security. Never have the challenges of global water security been so severe, and never have the opportunities for American leadership in the sector been greater.

In Koyra Number 6, a coastal hamlet bordering the Sundarbans in southwestern Bangladesh, a group of men unload barrels of water from their trawlers – 50 drums holding 30 liters each. They announce their arrival by yelling. And word spreads. This is how this village gets their daily drinking water, from a town nine miles away.

“Made in China” products surround us, yet few consumers have anything more than a foggy idea of where in China their phones, computers, and other goods come from. Hunan Province in South Central China is not only the home of spicy food, but the world’s largest mines for non-ferrous metals used in many electronic devices. Nearly all the glass panels for Apple and Samsung smartphones are manufactured in Hunan as well. While this multibillion-dollar phone industry has been a boon for Hunan’s economy, it has also produced seriously polluted rivers and soil.

The Earth’s front-line defenders are disappearing at an astonishing rate. On average three environmental activists were killed each week in 2015, according to a recent report from the United Nations special rapporteur on the situation of human rights defenders. Global Witness, an international NGO that documents natural resource extraction, corruption, and violence, reports a 59 percent increase in deaths last year compared to 2014. In total, 185 killings of environmental defenders were recorded by Global Witness in 2015.

Where violent conflict displaces people and disrupts societies, maternal and child health suffers, and such instability is widespread today. According to the UN Refugee Agency, there are 65.3 million forcibly displaced people, 21.3 million refugees, and 10 million stateless people over the world. In addition, more than 65 million people who are not displaced are affected by conflict.

As Syria has collapsed, spasming into civil war over the last five years, the effects have rippled far beyond its borders. Most notably, a surge of refugees added to already swelling ranks of people fleeing instability in Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, and sub-Saharan Africa, leading to the highest number of displaced people since the Second World War. At the same time, scientists have noted record-breaking temperatures, a melting Arctic, extreme droughts, and other signs of climate change. For some, an obvious question is: what does one have to do with the other?

“Climate work is practical, common-sense, good development,” said Carrie Thompson, deputy assistant administrator at the Bureau for Economic Growth, Education, and Environment at the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID). “It’s prevention, and we all know that preventative medicine is the best medicine.”